Arrowsmith (1931) – full review!
Arrowsmith (1931) – full review!
Produced by Samuel Goldwyn and directed by the soon-to-be-great John Ford with an Academy Award nominated screenplay from Sidney Howard (who finally succeeded in adapting Sinclair Lewis’s novel for the screen) this is probably one of the weaker Best Picture nominees. Richard Day’s Art Direction and Ray June’s Cinematography give it a (return to) silent film quality which was probably responsible for it being elevated to such honors. But silent film star and outstanding British actor Ronald Colman was miscast as the titled idealistic medical student Martin Arrowsmith who marries nurse Leora Tozer (Helen Hayes) and settles down as a country doctor in her small Midwestern South Dakota town for a couple of years before he invents a cattle saving serum that earns him a job as a researcher working under his former professor scientist Max Gottlieb (A.E. Anson) at the McGurk Institute in New York City. (John Qualen plays an immigrant Swedish farmer DeWitt Jennings & Beulah Bondi play Leora’s parents and Ward Bond plays a policeman – all are uncredited. Bert Roach did receive a credit as Leora’s brother Bert as did David Landau as the state veterinarian). Russell Hopton plays Terry Wickett another scientist mentored by Gottlieb. After two years Arrowsmith finally discovers something that kills microscopic bugs (e.g. bacteria) but is disillusioned when his employer Dr. Tubbs (Claude King) touts his success to the press prematurely; a French scientist had published the same results first. Arrowsmith’s association with another scientist Gustav Sondelius (Richard Bennett using a thick if inconsistent accent) leads him to the West Indies where he works on a cure for the bubonic plague with Dr. Oliver Marchand (Clarence Brooks) and has an affair with Joyce Lanyon (Myrna Loy) though it’s somewhat difficult to ascertain this fact by watching the edited film. Alec Francis plays Joyce’s older husband Twyford. Lumsden Hare plays Sir Robert Fairland the Governor that wouldn’t accept Arrowsmith’s (really Gottlieb’s) terms that only half the patients were to receive the serum whereas the other half would constitute the control group.
*** SPOILERS ***
Against her husband’s pleadings per the danger Leora travels with Arrowsmith to the West Indies where an accidental spilling of a liquid from a test tube containing a potent disease kills her while he’s on a quarantined island with Joyce. Sondelius dies of the plague himself. Their deaths cause him to become reckless and intentionally violate his experiments by allowing the control group to have the serum too. Back at McGurk the aging Gottlieb’s mind starts to go (because of Arrowsmith’s actions?) but the film ends optimistically as Arrowsmith rushes off to join his peer and fellow researcher Wickett who’d decided to leave the institute to work in a more isolated locale.
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